Fortunately, James Merrill Linn’s handwriting and I share some history, so I did not have as difficult of a time transcribing his writing this time around. I transcribed two letters, one to his brother and one to the Lewisburg Chronicle. I think it is fascinating to have to basically decode a letter in order to read it. I really enjoyed transcribing the letter to the Chronicle in particular because it was different from his journals and letters I had read in the past. While I would consider myself a sufficient subscriber, there were still many words and phrases that were indecipherable. I discovered a range of solutions to my problems. First, I would search the letters I could read into Google. This worked maybe 20% of the time to find the word that I was searching for. This is one example where I knew it was a name but could not figure out every letter to get the correct name. So I searched “Beauveyard” into Google, where it suggested searching for “Beauregard” instead. It turns out that he was a famous Southern military officer, and was the first prominent general of the Confederate States Army during the Civil War. Another way I discovered a word was with the help of my peers. They proved incredibly helpful many times because they provided a fresh set of eyes or had seen the same word in their letter. If none of these ways worked I forfeited and marked it up as unreadable.

Thankfully the Linn letters are located in the Archives, because in the end it is helpful to have the option of seeing them in person. I thought it was beneficial to have the option of looking at the physical letter with a magnifying glass, or zooming in on the photo of the letter on my computer. I found that both ways were equally helpful. Sometimes the computer image would blur the word too much that I could not see the one line that was necessary to decipher the word. On the other hand, it was helpful to have it on the computer because I could zoom in as close as I wanted. I also liked transcribing from the computer image because I would constantly lose my spot in his letter when looking at in while in the Archives.

Interestingly, the letter that James wrote to the Lewisburg Chronicle is very dissimilar to his journal entry written on the same date. Linn wrote his journal solely for himself, assuming that he would be the only one to read them, so he wrote about his personal experiences, rather than what was going on in the war. His letter to the Lewisburg Chronicle was meant for the whole public to have read. This is why he wrote about where they were going, the Colonels and officers he encountered, and their battles. He wrote about the batteries, the rebels, and the swamps they had to wade through rather than about the weather because that is what the people of Lewisburg would have preferred to read about.

For my first TEI assignment, I worked on Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum”. I had never read this short story before, and Poe is not the most clear author of all time. By marking up any type of writing, the encoder will gather a deeper understanding of the text by noticing certain words, researching ideas, etc. Personally, marking up the text while reading it required me to read closer than I would have normally. I defined words that I did not know rather than skipping them over because of the unknown importance of the word. I also noticed how this piece of writing differed from other texts that I had marked up in the past. My section of “The Pit and the Pendulum” was lacking persName altogether, which in other texts is very prevalent. I noticed how common state and trait tags were becoming in my markup. These were aspects that I would not have taken notice of had I not been the encoder of the text.

The encoder also has the distinct responsibility to decide what will be included in the markup and what will not. As Pierazzo wrote, “informed decisions need to be made on what to include because it is relevant and what can be safely omitted” (Pierazzo, 467). It is up to the discretion of the encoder of what to include, and with “The Pit and the Pendulum” I thought it would be most relevant to markup more state and traits than objects because of the tone of the text.

The Declaration of Independence assignment called on a different side of TEI mark up. This required more research on the part of the encoder than it had with Poe. Due to this, it allowed the encoder and reader to better engage with the text. Prior to my markup on Roger Sherman I did not know anything about him, not even that he was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Rather than the reader just acknowledging a list of names who signed the Declaration of Independence, they can gain insight into the lives of each man and learn facts such as where he was born and the name of the college he attended. While some of these facts may seem pointless, it is still better to have more knowledge of something than less, and a project like this will make that available.

Ultimately I believe that engagement similar to the ones with Poe and the Declaration of Independence are extremely helpful to better understand the text. As Rasumssen wrote, “reader roles are a function of how we manipulate and interpret an edition’s texts, and so fulfilling each role involves action at two levels: the level of manipulation and the level of interpretation” (Rasmussen, 128). The text is in the hands of the encoder. What they include and what they omit is up to their discretion, but even simply making these decisions engages the encoder with subject matter more intently.

Coming into this assignment, there were numerous games that our group considered as our text adventure game. It all came down to choosing an intriguing game that would be entertaining to play as well as make. At first we were hooked on the idea of a spin off of either Sherlock Holmes or a sitcom. However in the end we decided it would be more enjoyable to create a game that is a little out of the ordinary. We settled on a game that is a combination of Escape the Room and And Then There Were None. It will be a mix between horror and mystery.

While deciding the logistics of the game, such as how many players it would be, what type of setting, and how the game would flow, it was apparent how helpful it was to be working as a team. It was even more helpful that the members of our team come from a range of backgrounds. Yash is a computer science engineering major so he was the obvious leader when it came to the programming of the game. He let us know if our ideas were plausible or not. The coding that comes along with making this game is incredible- almost anything that we imagine is possible to incorporate into it. On the opposite side of the spectrum is my other teammate, Tong. She is a humanities major, whose job is to set up the plot of our computer game. She will think up new puzzles and scenarios that players will have to solve in order to, by the time limit, escape the room! There will be a timer on the page, and the player will only have a certain amount of time, between 1 and 5 minutes probably, to solve the puzzle or characters die one by one. There is going to be a certain amount of characters, and the player dies when they are the one left, so the objective of the game is to solve all of the puzzles in the shortest time possible to escape the room.

My skills fall in between that of Yash and Tong when it comes to creating our game. One of my jobs is to give a third party perspective by pointing out pros and cons to the game, and how we can improve it. I will look at the game logistically to see if the timeline of events make sense as well as assist Tong in creating the brainteasers that players have to solve in order to escape the room.

When thinking about this assignment as an approach to communication, there are both strengths and weaknesses. The creation of this computer game shows how effective one-way communication can be, from the creator to the player. However, communication the other way around is not possible. Due to this, the creator cannot receive any feedback from those playing their game, which is negative for both parties involved. My job will be to give third party feedback, so although I will be slightly biased and more knowledgeable about the game than a normal person, it will still be helpful and necessary knowledge.